Samsung INNOV8 Review
The Samsung Innov8 is a market leading camera phone for still pictures but the innovation doesn’t stop there. The Innov8 can record and play high quality QVGA video with a ton of options and abilities for optimizing your vidz. It is an S60 slider with a 8 megapixel, autofocus camera with dual LED flash. The phone runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and other key features include a 2.8 inch screen, WiFi, 16GB of on board flash memory, optical sensor, integrated GPS, accelerometer sensor, and DNSe audio technology.
The basic black color has a minimalist appeal and we like the clean lines. The extra weight gives the Innov8 a solid feel in the hand and the slider mechanism is easy to use–neither too stiff nor too loose. Yet, we couldn’t help but notice that when the phone is open, the Innov8’s front face shakes slightly back and forth.
Powered by a Symbian Version 9.3 OS, the Innov8’s menus are simple and intuitive; you can choose between a list and grid view. Fortunately, a lot of options are surfaced on the main menu page. As such, you don’t need to drill down too many levels to find popular features. You also can activate a shortcut bar to appear on the standby screen. It offers access to a user-programmable shortcuts menu, the calendar, the music player, the FM radio, and the personalization menu.
In the UI and in most applications, this is used as an equivalent to the surrounding direction keys – moving a finger left or right across the sensor is the same as pressing left or right on the D-pad. This does take a little getting used to, and pressing the d-pad in can sometimes be confused with a direction movement. But the sensor is surprisingly accurate and there are sensitivity options in the phone’s settings (or you can turn it off completely). However, the optical sensor really stands out in Web, where it is used as a ‘mouse’. It makes it much easier to select links than using the D-pad and also allows you to move around the page (scroll) more quickly.
The headline feature of the INNOV8 is its 8 megapixel camera. However, it is not only the megapixel number that counts – it is the lens, sensor and software algorithms that largely dictate the performance of a camera phone. The INNOV8 makes use of Samsung’s new 8 megapixel sensor (also used in Sony Ericsson’s C905); this sensor is larger than that used in the current crop of 5 megapixel cameras.
Features:
The Samsung Innov8 offers an exhaustive feature set, but for this review we’ll start with the 8-megapixel shooter, which is its star attraction. The camera takes pictures in seven resolutions, from a full eight megapixels (3,264×24,448) down to QVGA (320×240). The remaining feature set is pretty lengthy, but we’ll attempt to do it justice. There are four color effects, bright and white balance controls, an 8x digital zoom, a self-timer, a mosaic-shot mode, three quality settings, an adjustable ISO, exposure metering, and three shutter sounds, plus a silent option. You also get nine fun frames, but they’re available only when you’re shooting in the lowest resolution.
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